Twitter’s ongoing, long-term efforts to make conversations easier to follow and engage with on its platform is getting a boost with the company’s latest acquihire. The company has picked up the team behind Lightwell, a startup that had built a set of developer tools to build interactive, narrative apps, for an undisclosed sum. Lightwell’s founder and CEO, Suzanne Xie, is becoming a director of product leading Twitter’s Conversations initiative, with the rest of her small four-person team joining her on the conversations project.

(Sidenote: Sara Haider, who had been leading the charge on rethinking the design of Conversations on Twitter, most recently through the release of twttr, Twitter’s newish prototyping app, announced that she would be moving on to a new project at the company after a short break. I understand twttr will continue to be used to openly test conversation tweaks and other potential changes to how the app works. )

The Lightwell/Twitter news was announced late yesterday both by Lightwell itself and Twitter’s VP of product Keith Coleman. A Twitter spokesperson also confirmed the deal to TechCrunch in a short statement today: “We are excited to welcome Suzanne and her team to Twitter to help drive forward the important work we are doing to serve the public conversation,” he said. Interestingly, Twitter is on a product hiring push it seems. Other recent hires Coleman noted were Other recent product hires include Angela Wise and Tom Hauburger. Coincidentally, both joined from autonomous companies, respectively Waymo and Voyage.

To be clear, this is more acqui-hire than hire: only the Lightwell team (of what looks like three people) is joining Twitter. The Lightwell product will no longer be developed, but it is not going away, either. Xie noted in a separate Medium post that apps that have already been built (or plan to be built) on the platform will continue to work. It will also now be free to use.

Lightwell originally started life in 2012 as Hullabalu, as one of the many companies producing original-content interactive children’s stories for smartphones and tablets. In a sea of children-focused storybook apps, Hullabalu’s stories stood out not just because of the distinctive cast of characters that the startup had created, but for how the narratives were presented: part book, part interactive game, the stories engaged children and moved narratives along by getting the users to touch and drag elements across the screen.

After some years, Hullabalu saw an opportunity to package its technology and make it available as a platform for all developers, to be used not just by other creators of children’s content, but advertisers and more. It seems the company shifted at that time to make Lightwell its main focus.

The Hullabalu apps remained live on the App Store, even when the company moved on to focus on Lightwell. However, they hadn’t been updated in two years’ time. Xie says they will remain as is.

In its startup life, the company went through YCombinator, TechStars, and picked up some $6.5 million in funding (per Crunchbase), from investors that included Joanne Wilson, SV Angel, Vayner, Spark Labs, Great Oak, Scout Ventures and more.

If turning Hullabalu into Lightwell was a pivot, then the exit to Twitter can be considered yet another interesting shift in how talent and expertise optimized for one end can be repurposed to meet another.

One of Twitter’s biggest challenges over the years has been trying to create a way to make conversations (also narratives of a kind) easy to follow — both for those who are power users, and for those who are not and might otherwise easily be put off from using the product.

The crux of the problem has been that Twitter’s DNA is about real-time rivers of chatter that flow in one single feed, while conversations by their nature linger around a specific topic and become hard to follow when there are too many people talking. Trying to build a way to fit the two concepts together has foxed the company for a long time now.

At its best, bringing in a new team from the outside will potentially give Twitter a fresh perspective on how to approach conversations on the platform, and the fact that Lightwell has been thinking about creative ways to present narratives gives them some cred as a group that might come up completely new concepts for presenting conversations.

At a time when it seems that the conversation around Conversations had somewhat stagnated, it’s good to see a new chapter opening up.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Twitter picks up team from narrative app Lightwell in its latest effort to improve conversations

Disrupt San Francisco 2019, our flagship event on October 2-4, features three full days of programming, more than 10,000 attendees, over 1,200 exhibiting startups and sponsors — and that’s just for starters. That’s a lot of ground to cover. Here’s a hot tip: take advantage of group discounts, saddle up and bring your whole posse to the show and squeeze out every bit of information, inspiration and opportunity possible.

Spread your crew across Disrupt and get more done. Network til you drop in Startup Alley — using CrunchMatch, our free business match-making platform, to find and schedule meetings with only the best connections for your business. Bear witness to our epic pitch competition, Startup Battlefield — a great place to spot investment-worthy companies.

Attend the many Main Stage panel discussions and interviews with tech titans, up-and-coming founders and startup investors. Check out the conference agenda here. Looking for actionable tips and advice? Head for the Extra Crunch Stage. Yeah, you’ll learn a thing or two.

We offer group discounts for every pass level, to make your posse possible. Here’s what you need to know.

Group Innovator Pass: Buy five or more passes and get a 20% discount. Need 10 or more passes? Email us for a price quote at events@techcrunch.com. An Innovator Pass grants access to the Main Stage, Extra Crunch Stage, Q&As, workshops, CrunchMatch, networking receptions and the TechCrunch Events App, which lets you communicate with other attendees.

Group Founder Pass: Buy two or more passes and you’ll get a 10% discount. Your Founder Pass gets you the same benefits as an Innovator Pass but at an already discounted rate — but you must be a (co)founder of a company (of any size).

Group Investor Pass: Purchase two or more passes to get a 10% discount. An Investor Pass provides the same benefits as an Innovator pass, PLUS access to the Investor Lounge, an invitation to the investor-only reception and two hours of private meeting space.

Group Expo Only Pass: If you want to buy Expo Only passes in bulk (10 or more), email events@techcrunch.com for a price quote. An Expo Only Pass provides access to the Startup Alley expo floor, workshops and a lite version of the TechCrunch Events App.

Group Startup Alley Exhibitor Packages: If you’re interested in purchasing more than one Startup Alley Exhibitor Package, email startupalley@techcrunch.com for more information. This package includes exhibit space for one day, use of the Startup Alley Lounge, access to the media list and two or three Founder Passes, depending on when you book.

Disrupt San Francisco 2019 takes place on October 2-4. Bring your posse and cover more ground, find more opportunity and discover more ways to grow your business. Get your group discounts today. If you’re riding solo, no problemo. Get an early-bird ticket and, depending on the pass level you choose, you can save up to $1,300. Saddle up and ride!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Bring your posse to Disrupt SF 2019 with group discounts

The first day of work at a new job can be very stressful. The unfamiliar surroundings and onslaught of new material can cause new hires some degree of discomfort. But sometimes the atmosphere at the new company can be welcoming and can help counteract the stress.

Different companies have their own traditions to help make this transition period more comfortable and memorable for new hires. Some of these traditions include:

• Team-building day trips for new hires
• Breakfast with the CEO
• Tours of the best cafes, parks, and other spots in the neighborhood
• Office “quests” (or some other gamification of onboarding)
• Personalized onboarding programs or interactive company academies

Usually, only employees can experience these traditions. But there’s one new-hire tradition that has become extremely popular and often highly publicized: the “welcome kit”.

Welcome kits usually contain a hodgepodge of items that employees will need on the job (pens, notebooks, books, etc.) and things to make employees feel welcome (clothing, stickers, water bottles, or more unusual items — often with the company name or logo on them).

To get a sense of how different companies handle their kits, we talked to four successful startups about their welcome kits in the article below, followed by our look at a dozen more:

Table of Contents:

• Dropbox
• Salesforce
• Wrike
• Similarweb
• Nike
• Braintree
• MOZ
• IBM
• SEGA
• Social Chain
• Ogilvy & Mather
• Google
• MailChimp
• Ferrero
• PepsiCo
• Key takeaways

This article is based on the personal welcome kit collection of Vladimir Polo, founder of AcademyOcean. AcademyOcean is a tool for interactive onboarding and training (and Vladimir Polo is a fan of welcome kits).

Dropbox

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | How Dropbox, Nike, Salesforce, MailChimp, Google and Pepsi welcome their new hires

BuzzFeed is offering readers a new approach to finding content that fits the way they’re feeling right now.

It’s not the boring old approach of following a link on social media or search, or of typing BuzzFeed.com into your browser. Instead, on MoodFeed, readers can identify their mood, then they’ll get a list of articles that match those feelings.

There are currently six options — curious, stressed, bored, nostalgic, joyful or hungry. If you select “curious,” you’ll see a list of BuzzFeed posts about strange facts, life hacks and the like. If, on the other hand, you go with “nostalgic,” you’ll get lots of headlines about pop culture history. And if you’re not sure, you can just give the mood wheel a spin and see what it lands on.

Talia Halperin, BuzzFeed’s vice president of brand management, described this as an experiment in “getting our audience engaged and excited in a non-traditional way.” The team apparently created these recommendations by first identifying the main mood options, then “reverse-engineering” which articles would be a good fit.

And while BuzzFeed’s never offered this kind of interface before, Halperin argued that the broader strategy is one that the organization uses “all the time, in a curated, audience-focused way” — when the team is sharing and promoting articles, it’s thinking about moods and associated identities.

In fact, the BuzzFeed team has actually built AI tools to help with this process, automating the ability to identify which BuzzFeed stories should be posted on which BuzzFeed pages, when “evergreen” stories should be re-promoted and at what time headlines should be shared.

In the case of MoodFeed, Halperin made it sound like this is very much an experiment, with the company still figuring out things like “how often we should refresh it, what our strategy is around that.”

At the same time, she said there’s plenty of room for expansion.

“This could scale in a really interesting way,” she added. “You may have noticed that there are only six moods, but of course, there are several different moods that come along with certain events [so we’re interested] in really being able expand to expand the moods at different times of the year.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | BuzzFeed’s new MoodFeed recommends content based on how you’re feeling

Whether you’re a time-crunched procrastinator or a last-minute decision-maker, we have great news for early-stage hardware startup founders! You get one more week to apply to compete in Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhen on November 11-12 in China.

Did we just hear a collective sigh of relief? Take advantage of the reprieve and grab this opportunity for all it’s worth — $25,000 in prize money for starters. What are you waiting for? Submit your application by the new deadline: August 28 at 11:59 p.m. (PT).

This Battlefield takes place as part of the larger TechCrunch Shenzhen show, produced in collaboration with our China partner TechNode, that runs November 9-12. Shenzhen, the heartland of hardware, earned its stellar reputation for supporting hardware startups through a combination of accelerators, rapid prototyping and world-class manufacturing.

We accept applications from early-stage hardware startups from any country. Participating in this pitch competition will place your startup in front of some of the most influential technologists, investors and media. Win or lose, that kind of world-class exposure can change the course of your business.

You’re qualified to apply if you can meet these minimum requirements:

• Submit the TC Hardware Battlefield 2019 application before August 28 at 11:59 p.m. (PT)
• You must have a minimally viable product to demo onstage
• Your product has received little, if any, press coverage to date
• Your product must be a hardware device or component

Here’s how the Hardware Battlefield works. Applying and participating is free. TechCrunch editors will pore over all qualified applications and then select 10-15 of the best hardware startups to compete. If you make the cut, get ready for six weeks of intense prep as our Battlefield team coaches you (for free) on crafting the perfect pitch.

Each startup has just six minutes to pitch and demo their creation to the judges — all expert VCs, founders and technologists. After you pitch, you’ll face a tough Q&A with the judges. That free coaching will sure come in handy. If you make it through the first round, you’ll pitch all over again to a fresh set of judges.

Only one startup will be declared the winner, earn serious bragging rights and that $25,000 equity-free prize. But every team receives invaluable media and investor interest. That exposure goes way beyond the live audience. We record the Battlefield on video and publish it on TechCrunch to a global audience.

Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhen takes place on November 11-12. This is your chance to launch your hardware startup on a global stage. Take advantage of the extra week and apply to Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhen before August 28 at 11:59 p.m. (PT). Come and show us your hardware!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhen? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Deadline extended one week: apply to Hardware Battlefield @ TC Shenzhen

While some analysts are calling WeWork’s IPO filing a “masterpiece of obfuscation,” the esteemed tech observer Professor Scott Galloway simply calls it “WeWTF.”

There is another company that is coming up fast in the “WeViewMirror” — if you will — and that’s Knotel. Also a “flexible workspace provider,” Knotel has reversed the WeWork model and instead of “We” branding everywhere, simply leases buildings, takes a small office for its staff and then kits out the building with modular furniture a company can just move straight into and call their own.

Knotel has now completed a $400 million financing, led by Wafra, an investment arm of the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Kuwait. Mori Trust (one of Japan’s leading real estate business operators), Itochu (one of Japan’s largest trading conglomerates) and Mercuria (a leading Japanese equity firm) also participated in the financing. Returning and previous Knotel investors include Norwest Venture Partners, Newmark Knight Frank, Bloomberg Beta and Rocket Internet.

Knotel will use the financing to grow its footprint in existing markets, continue expanding into “the world’s 30 largest cities” and also “deepen its engagement with global enterprise accounts.” Basically, that is code for going after the world’s biggest businesses who now require the flexibility of offices like they require AWS Cloud Service provision for their applications.

In a statement, Amol Sarva, co-founder and CEO of Knotel, said: “Knotel is building the future of the workplace, and we are excited to welcome a group of investors who believe passionately in our product, vision and ability to execute. Wafra will help us continue our rapid global expansion and solidify our position as the leader in a fast-growing, trillion-dollar flexible office market.”

Unlike traditional co-working players, which provide shared spaces for freelancers and company satellite locations, Knotel focuses on providing private and fully furnished workspaces to large enterprises. The whole idea is to make it very simple: flexible workspaces; cheaper capital expenditures; operational flexibility.

There is also a tech play here. Its “Baya” product is a blockchain platform used internally to facilitate data-driven acquisition decisions and reduce company costs, while “Geometry” is a subscription service to make furnishing your office far easier, faster and cost-flexible.

Speaking to TechCrunch, Sarva said: “This funding is timely because that other IPO [referring to the WeWork IPOD] is in the works. People have been complaining about some of the aspects of that and some of the inefficiencies they have. But the core of this new investment for us is about making the business capitally efficient.” He said everything they do is geared toward this.

He said Knotel will do this in three ways: “We will go way deeper into cities. Many individual cities are getting bigger than whole competitor companies in revenue. NYC, Paris, London SF. So doing that is way more efficient and others don’t understand this.

“Secondly we are adding about a dozen more cities. Not 1,200. No-one makes money in Cairo.

“Thirdly, every time we announce a product or tech product it’s about the core business. A product like Geometry, or modular furniture etc. That is all about making us grow faster with less capital. Making real estate less painful, faster and with less friction.”

The company now has more than 4 million square feet across more than 200 locations in New York, San Francisco, London, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Paris, Berlin, Toronto, Boston, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In less than four years, the company has raised a total of $560 million, and is now valued at more than $1 billion. Its London footprint now stands at 263,000 square feet across 63 locations. It’s now aiming to be London’s top flexible office provider (by building count), having achieved this in New York earlier in the year, it says.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Workspace provider Knotel secures 0M, putting it in WeWork’s rear-view mirror